richard nixon foreign visits

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How Nixon’s 1972 Visit to China Changed the Balance of Cold War Power

By: Dave Roos

Updated: February 22, 2024 | Original: February 9, 2022

On July 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation in a live televised broadcast to make an unexpected announcement: he had accepted an invitation from Beijing to become the first U.S. president to visit the People’s Republic of China, a Communist nation of 750 million that, next to the Soviet Union , was America’s fiercest adversary in the Cold War .

“I have taken this action because of my profound conviction that all nations will gain from a reduction of tensions and a better relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China,” said Nixon in his address.

The surprise announcement was the result of months of top-secret diplomacy between the Nixon White House and Beijing. Nixon, always a fan of the “big play,” had high hopes that his trip to China would be the kind of seismic geopolitical event that changed the course of history.

In many ways, he was right. In the words of one of his ambassadors, Nixon’s eight-day visit in February of 1972 was “the week that changed the world” and substantially altered the balance of power between the United States, China and the Soviet Union.

China-U.S. Relations Were Ice Cold

When Richard Nixon took office in 1969, it marked the 20th anniversary of the creation of the People’s Republic of China, and 20 years of frozen diplomatic relations between the United States and Communist China. The two sides hadn’t spoken for decades, and the United States was at war with the Communist North Vietnamese in China’s backyard.

Nixon himself had won early political fame as an anti-communist hawk with his pursuit of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official accused of spying for the Soviet Union.

The closest the U.S. and China had come to diplomatic contact was 15 years earlier in 1954, when top officials from both nations attended the Geneva Convention to negotiate new political boundaries between North and South Korea, and North and South Vietnam. At the conference, John Foster Dulles, then secretary of state under Dwight D. Eisenhower , had famously refused to shake hands with Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier and lead negotiator.

But as the tumultuous 1960s came to a close, the Nixon administration was facing several major challenges: a disastrous war in Vietnam, social strife at home, and stalled nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets.

While Nixon publicly portrayed himself as a populist hardliner, he was a close reader of history and a shrewd strategist. Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger came to believe that by thawing relations with the Chinese and bringing them into the “society of nations,” America could gain a powerful new ally in its negotiations with both the North Vietnamese and the Soviets.

The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

The Chinese, it turned out, had their own strategic reasons to re-open dialogue with the United States. Despite their shared Communist ideology, there was plenty of mistrust between the PRC and the Soviet Union. The PRC leadership worried that their well-armed Soviet neighbors had designs on expanding their territory into Asia. By the late 1960s, frequent border skirmishes between the Soviets and the Chinese verged on all-out war.

“Nixon and Kissinger cooked up this idea of pitting the Soviet Union and China against each other with the United States as a third corner of the triangle to create a stable balance of power,” says Evan Thomas, journalist and author of Being Nixon: A Man Divided . “‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ was a very Nixonian idea.”

Since direct diplomatic ties between China and the U.S. were severed, Nixon had to work through private back channels in Pakistan and Romania to make overtures to the Chinese, who proved receptive. In a rare public acknowledgement of the warming relationship, the PRC invited the U.S. ping pong team to a series of exhibition games in Beijing in 1971, a cultural exchange that became known as “ping-pong diplomacy.”

The biggest coup was Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in July 1971 to meet face-to-face with the Chinese leader Chou Enlai. While on a diplomatic trip to Pakistan, Kissinger feigned a stomach illness that would keep him locked away in his hotel room for several days. Under the cover of night, Kissinger boarded a private Pakistani jet to Beijing, where he personally asked the PRC leadership to approve an official state visit from the American president.

In a coded cable sent back to the White House, Kissinger shared the good news with Nixon in one word: “ Eureka .”

The Handshake That Shook the World

Nixon’s announcement of his upcoming trip to China was a shock to most Americans, but the bold political gesture quickly won popular support. The sharpest criticism of the visit didn’t come from Nixon’s liberal opposition, but from conservatives from his own party who thought it was a betrayal of Taiwan, where the anti-communist Chinese government had fled after losing the civil war.

But talk of Taiwan would have to wait. Nixon’s intention with his visit was to project goodwill and cooperation, and make it known to the world that the U.S. recognized a third superpower on the world stage, one that could be an important economic ally and a strategic foil in negotiations with the Soviets.

Every moment of the weeklong visit was carefully orchestrated and staged, with TV cameras broadcasting it all to rapt audiences worldwide. And Nixon knew that no single made-for-TV moment was more important than the first time that he met face-to-face with Chou Enlai, the same man whom the U.S. Secretary of State had publicly snubbed in 1954.

On February 21, 1972, Air Force One landed in Beijing. Instructing the rest of his envoy to wait onboard the plane, Nixon descended the stairway first with his wife Patty—who wore a long red coat, a color of great significance to the PRC—and eagerly extended his hand to greet the PRC premier.

“The U.S. had literally turned a cold shoulder to Chou in 1954,” says Thomas. “For Nixon to hold out his hand was a clear signal that times had changed and that America was ready to embrace the Chinese. It was brilliant stagecraft.”

Soon after Nixon settled into his hotel, he was told that Mao Zedong , the aging “chairman” of the Communist revolution wanted to meet with him. Although Mao was ill, the two chatted for an hour while cameras captured the world leaders smiling and joking with one another.

“Both men were aware of the historic significance of what they were doing,” says Thomas, “and they were both showmen in their own way.”

The Soviets Come to the Table

Nixon’s historic visit to China was the high point of a presidency later stained by the Watergate scandal and his resignation in 1974. While the visit was a public relations boon for both nations, Nixon and Kissinger failed to secure China’s help in ending the war in Vietnam, and no real progress was made on the status of Taiwan.

But the visit helped to achieve Nixon’s larger political goal of realigning the balance of power on the global stage. The Soviets, who previously rejected calls for limiting their nuclear arsenal, changed their tune when Nixon reopened talks with China. Just two months after Nixon returned from Beijing, he set off again for Moscow, where he and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and made plans for a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. space flight in 1975 .

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UC Berkeley Library Update

The Week that Changed the World: Nixon Visits China

By Shannon White

February 2022 — This month marks the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s weeklong visit to China, a trip that resulted in the establishment of a formal diplomatic relationship between the governments of the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

The UC Berkeley Oral History Center’s collection contains several interviews discussing the event, as well as the political and public atmosphere that surrounded Nixon’s 1971 announcement of the impending trip. Included in these are the accounts of both Caroline and John Service, the latter a diplomat and member of the United States Foreign Service. The Services were among the few Americans welcomed back to the country in the early 1970s by Zhou Enlai, then the premier of the PRC.  

In Caroline Service’s oral history, she discusses the era of “ping pong diplomacy” in the early 1970s that occurred prior to the president’s visit to China. “We were all electrified one day. . . by seeing on television, reading in the paper, seeing pictures that the American ping pong team was going to Peking,” Service recalls of this turning point in the relations between the two countries. 

In this interview, Service also discusses the public perception of Richard Nixon at the time of the trip, echoing the popular opinion that only Nixon, as a staunch anti-communist with the support of his fellow political conservatives, could make such a move without widespread criticism. As Service says:

Now I have hardly a good word to say for Nixon. I have disliked him intensely forever, it seems to me, since ever he appeared on the political scene. Yet, I suppose that only a Republican conservative, reactionary almost, president could have done this. I do not think a Democrat could have done this. I think it had to be done.

In his oral history, Dr. Otto C. C. Lin, whose career is in Chinese technological innovation and entrepreneurship, offers his perspective on Henry Kissinger and Nixon traveling to China. When asked about the effects of the visit on Taiwan, Lin said, “Republicans were always considered friends for KMT [Kuomintang]. Hence, Nixon was considered a turncoat and Kissinger an accomplice of Nixon in betraying his friend, the ROC [Republic of China].” Ultimately, though, Lin says, “I think history would say that Nixon and Kissinger did the right thing to help open up China.” 

Cecilia Chiang, a chef and entrepreneur credited with popularizing northern Chinese cuisine in the United States, discusses in her oral history the buzz surrounding the state dinner attended by Nixon and Kissinger during their visit. “The menu was printed in all these newspapers in the United States and also the Chinese Newspaper,” recalls Chiang, “People called in. Called in from New York, from Hawaii, called me. ‘Can you duplicate that dinner? That dinner for us. We would like to just fly in just for that dinner.’”

Chiang remembers her surprise at the simplicity of the meal, stating that when she saw the menu, “I started to laugh. They said, ‘Why do you laugh?’ They put bean sprouts on the menu, because China is so poor at the time. No food, no nothing.” 

These interviews contain a wealth of insightful information concerning not just the presidential visit to China, but also the general political climate of US foreign relations in the 1970s. Caroline Service offers the perspective of a family who had by this point been involved in US foreign diplomacy for decades. Otto Lin leverages the Nixon visit in relation to the modern political, cultural, and economic landscape of China. Cecilia Chiang’s oral history provides a glimpse into the culinary landscape of China, a country still struggling with rationing and food shortages in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. 

You can find the interviews mentioned here and all our oral histories from the search feature on our home page . Search by name, keyword, and several other criteria.

Shannon White is currently a third-year student at UC Berkeley studying Ancient Greek and Latin. They are an undergraduate research apprentice in the Nemea Center under Professor Kim Shelton and a member of the editing staff for the Berkeley Undergraduate Journal of Classics . Shannon works as a student editor for the Oral History Center.

About the Oral History Center

The Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library has interviews on just about every topic imaginable. We preserve voices of people from all walks of life, with varying political perspectives, national origins, and ethnic backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials are available online at no cost to scholars and the public.

Oral Histories Used Here

Caroline Service: State Dept. Duty in China, The McCarthy Era, and After 1933–1977

Otto C.C. Lin: Promoting Education, Innovation, and Chinese Culture in the Era of Globalization Volume I: Oral History

Cecilia Chiang: An Oral History

Related Resources from The Bancroft Library

Cecilia Chiang is included in the Chez Panisse, Inc. pictorial collection . BANC PIC 2001.192.

Caroline Service letters to Lisa Green : TLS and ALS, 1950 Sept.–1995 April. Bancroft BANC MSS 99/81 cz.

Caroline Schulz Service papers, 1919–1997. Bancroft BANC MSS 99/237 cz.

John S. Service papers, 1925–1999. BANC MSS 87/21 cz.

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Nixon's trip to China laid the groundwork for normalizing U.S.-China relations

John Ruwitch

It's been 50 years since President Nixon went to China, a trip that changed the world's balance of power. The fate of Taiwan was not addressed, and the issue still stalks U.S.-China relations.

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Richard Nixon: Foreign Affairs

President Richard Nixon, like his arch-rival President John F. Kennedy, was far more interested in foreign policy than in domestic affairs. It was in this arena that Nixon intended to make his mark. Although his base of support was within the conservative wing of the Republican Party, and although he had made his own career as a militant opponent of Communism, Nixon saw opportunities to improve relations with the Soviet Union and establish relations with the People's Republic of China. Politically, he hoped to gain credit for easing Cold War tensions; geopolitically, he hoped to use the strengthened relations with Moscow and Beijing as leverage to pressure North Vietnam to end the war—or at least interrupt it —with a settlement. He would play China against the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union against China, and both against North Vietnam.

Nixon took office intending to secure control over foreign policy in the White House. He kept Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird out of the loop on key matters of foreign policy. The instrument of his control over what he called "the bureaucracy" was his assistant for national security affairs, Henry Kissinger. So closely did the two work together that they are sometimes referred to as "Nixinger." Together, they used the National Security Council staff to concentrate power in the White House—that is to say, within themselves.

Opening to China

A year before his election, Nixon had written in Foreign Affairs of the Chinese, that "There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation." Relations between the two great communist powers, the Soviet Union and China, had been deteriorating since the 1950s and had erupted into open conflict with border clashes during Nixon's first year in office. The President sensed opportunity and began to send out tentative diplomatic feelers to China. Reversing Cold War precedent, he publicly referred to the Communist nation by its official name, the People's Republic of China.A breakthrough of sorts occurred in the spring of 1971, when Mao Zedong invited an American table tennis team to China for some exhibition matches. Before long, Nixon dispatched Kissinger to secret meetings with Chinese officials. As America's foremost anti-Communist politician of the Cold War, Nixon was in a unique position to launch a diplomatic opening to China, leading to the birth of a new political maxim: "Only Nixon could go to China." The announcement that the President would make an unprecedented trip to Beijing caused a sensation among the American people, who had seen little of the world's most populous nation since the Communists had taken power. Nixon's visit to China in February 1972 was widely televised and heavily viewed. It was only a first step, but a decisive one, in the budding rapprochement between the two states.

Detente With the Soviet Union

The announcement of the Beijing summit produced an immediate improvement in American relations with the U.S.S.R.—namely, an invitation for Nixon to meet with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev in Russia. It was a sign that Nixon's effort at "triangulation" was working; fear of improved relations between China and America was leading the Soviets to better their own relations with America, just as Nixon hoped. In meeting with the Soviet leader, Nixon became the first President to visit Moscow.

Of more lasting importance were the treaties the two men signed to control the growth of nuclear arms. The agreements—a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and an Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty—did not end the arms race, but they paved the way for future pacts which sought to reduce and eliminate arms. Nixon also negotiated and signed agreements on science, space, and trade.

Withdrawal from Vietnam

While Nixon tried to use improved relations with the Soviets and Chinese to pressure North Vietnam to reach a settlement, he could only negotiate a flawed agreement that merely interrupted, rather than ended, the war.

In his first year in office, Nixon had tried to settle the war on favorable terms. Through secret negotiations between Kissinger and the North Vietnamese, the President warned that if major progress were not made by November 1, 1969, "we will be compelled—with great reluctance—to take measures of the greatest consequences." The NSC staff made plans for some of those options, including the resumed bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of Haiphong Harbor. Nixon then took a step designed both to interfere with Communist supplies and to signal a willingness to act irrationally to achieve his goals—he secretly ordered the bombing of Communist supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Also in keeping with his intention to convey a sense of presidential irrationality—Nixon as "madman"—he launched a worldwide nuclear alert.

None of it worked. The North Vietnamese did not yield; Nixon did not carry out his threats; the war continued. Nixon did not know how to bring the conflict to a successful resolution.

The President did not reveal any of this to the American people. Publicly, he said his strategy was a combination of negotiating and "Vietnamization," a program to train and arm the South Vietnamese to take over responsibility for their own defense, thus enabling American troops to withdraw. He began the withdrawals even before he issued his secret ultimatum to the Communists, periodically announcing partial troop withdrawals throughout his first term.

After a coup in Cambodia replaced neutralist leader Prince Sihanouk with a pro-American military government of dubious survivability, Nixon ordered a temporary invasion of Cambodia—the administration called it an incursion—by American troops. The domestic response included the largest round of antiwar protests in American history. It was during these protests in May 1970 that National Guardsmen fired at rock-throwing protestors at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four. Two weeks later, police fired on students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, leaving two more dead.

By the end of the year, Nixon was planning to finish the American military withdrawal from Vietnam within eighteen months. Kissinger talked him out of it. Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, recorded this discussion in his diary on December 21, 1970. "Henry was in for a while and the President discussed a possible trip for next year. He's thinking about going to Vietnam in April [1971] or whenever we decide to make the basic end-of-the-war announcement. His idea would be to tour around the country, build up [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu and so forth, and then make the announcement right afterwards. Henry argues against a commitment that early to withdraw all combat troops because he feels that if we pull them out by the end of '71, trouble can start mounting in '72 that we won't be able to deal with, and which we'll have to answer for at the elections. He prefers instead a commitment to have them all out by the end of '72 so that we won't have to deliver finally until after the [US presidential] elections [in November 1972] and therefore can keep our flanks protected. This would certainly seem to make more sense, and the President seemed to agree in general, but he wants Henry to work up plans on it."

In 1971, South Vietnamese ground forces, with American air support, took part in Lamson 719, an offensive against Communist supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and Cambodia. Since American troops would not take part in ground combat operations in either country, Lamson was considered a test (at least a partial one) of the success of Vietnamization. By all accounts, it went badly, but it disrupted Communist supply lines long enough to aid the war effort.

Nixon and Kissinger anticipated that the biggest threat to their plans would be a dry-season Communist offensive in 1972. Their worst fears were realized when the North Vietnamese regular army poured into the South in March 1972. Nixon responded by implementing some of the plans he had made in 1969. He mined Haiphong Harbor and used B-52s to bomb the North. The combined power of the American and South Vietnamese military ultimately stopped the offensive, though not before the Communists had more territory under their control.

The North Vietnamese were eager to reach a settlement before the American presidential election and subsequent removal of U.S. forces from the country. Hanoi made a breakthrough proposal in October 1972 and reached agreement with Kissinger rapidly. The South Vietnamese government balked, however, chiefly because the agreement preserved North Vietnamese control of all the territory Hanoi currently held. To turn up the political pressure on Nixon, the North Vietnamese began broadcasting provisions of the agreement. Kissinger held a press conference announcing that "Peace is at hand" without giving away too many details.

After the election, Nixon told South Vietnamese president Thieu that if he did not agree to the settlement, Congress would cut off aid to his government—and that conservatives who had supported South Vietnam would lead the way. He promised that the United States would retaliate militarily if the North violated the agreement. To back up this threat, he launched the "Christmas Bombings" of 1972. When negotiations resumed in January, the few outstanding issues were quickly resolved. Thieu backed down. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 23, 1973, bringing an end to the participation of U.S. ground forces in the Vietnam War.

Beyond the "Big Three"

Nixon's policies vis-a-vis China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam are his most famous and controversial, but he left his mark on a host of other diplomatic matters.

The 1973 October War alerted America to the power of oil-producing Arab nations to impose a great price - literally, in the form of higher fuel costs - to force a compromise on the disposition of lands Israel seized in the Six Day War of 1967. When Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur, they were backed up by Gulf oil states that announced a price increase of 70 percent; and when Nixon asked Congress for emergency aid to Israel, Arab officials imposed a total embargo on oil shipments to the United States. American dependence on foreign oil meant the crisis would not be resolved on military terms alone.

With Nixon distracted by Watergate, Kissinger took charge of policy. A large-scale American airlift of supplies prevented Israeli defeat; a ceasefire negotiated with the Soviet Union forestalled Israeli victory. When Israel continued fighting after the ceasefire deadline (with Kissinger's tacit acquiescence), the Soviets threatened unilateral action. Kissinger responded by putting American forces worldwide on DefCon (for Defense Condition) Three. The Soviets' tone changed. Instead of unilateral action, they now spoke of sending observers, not soldiers. The war ended soon thereafter with no apparent victor. Over the next several months, Kissinger helped redraw the lines of the Middle East and inspired the term "shuttle diplomacy" as he flew from capital to capital seeking agreement. The result was, as one observer put it, "a reasonably stable situation on the Sinai and Syrian fronts."In Chile, Nixon's opposition to the democratically elected president, socialist Salvador Allende, helped pave the way for a military coup whose legacy of death and despotism burden that nation still. Following Allende's election, Nixon authorized the CIA to prevent him from taking office by any means. General Renee Schneider, the Chilean army chief of staff, supported his country's constitution and opposed any coup plot. With U.S. encouragement, right-wing Argentine military officials tried to kidnap Schneider, wounding him fatally on October 22, 1970.

Nixon cut American aid to Chile, which had been running $70 million a year, to less than $1 million. The CIA continued to be involved in anti-Allende political activities before the socialist president died in a military coup on September 11, 1973. A junta led by General Augusto Pinochet replaced Chile's democracy with despotism. Allende supporters were rounded up and detained in Santiago's National Stadium. More than a thousand, including two Americans, were summarily executed. The evidence that has emerged to date indicates that Nixon had no direct involvement in the coup; the President, however, had done much to suggest that he would welcome one. Fearing a tyranny of the Left, he quickly embraced a tyranny of the Right.

Miller Center, University of Virginia

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Nixon in China

Dear Educators,

The Education and Public Programs Team at the Nixon Library is pleased to remind you that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) continues to be an excellent source for entertaining and historical content! Simply follow the links below for additional information.

“Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations… There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.” Richard Nixon, Oct. 1967 -  Foreign Affairs , Vol. 46, No. 1, October 1967, pp. 113-125.

President Richard Nixon Looks at the View from the Great Wall of China, February 24, 1972. Image: WHPO 8548-12A

Monday, February 21, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In “ the week that changed the world ,” President Nixon  accepted an invitation  from the Chinese Communist government to visit the country.  Nixon's foreign policy tried to de-escalate international tensions by building new relationships with former adversaries . 

President Richard Nixon and Premier Chou En-Lai Shake Hands at the Nixons' Arrival in Peking, China, February 21, 1972. Image: WHPO 8498-02A

Nixon went to China in  February 1972  to meet with Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Chou En-lai in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. This historic visit marked the first high-level encounter between the United States and the People's Republic of China in more than two decades, ushering in a new era in Washington-Beijing relations. This relationship reverberates to this day and is as consequential now as it was then.

President Richard Nixon and Premier Chou En-Lai Greet a Young Girl at Hang Chou (Hangzhou) West Lake Park in China, February 26, 1972. Image: WHPO 8604-10

Using  DocsTeach , the National Archives’ online tool for teaching activities, we invite you and your students to  analyze images  from President Nixon's visit to China in 1972 to determine the sequence of events and learn more about American and Chinese cultural differences.

Please feel free to contact us at  [email protected]  if you have any questions.

Stayed tuned for regular updates from the Nixon Library Education and Public Programs Team.

The Nixon Library Education and Public Programs Team

A Short History of the Department of State

Nixon’s foreign policy.

President Nixon pursued two important policies that both culminated in 1972. In February he visited Beijing, setting in motion normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China. In May, he traveled to the Soviet Union and signed agreements that contained the results of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks (SALT I) , and new negotiations were begun to extend further arms control and disarmament measures.

These developments marked the beginning of a period of “détente” in line with a general tendency among Americans to favor a lower profile in world affairs after the Vietnam War , which finally ended in 1975 with the last withdrawal of U.S. personnel. While improvements in relations with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China signaled a possible thaw in the Cold War, they did not lead to general improvement in the international climate. The international economy experienced considerable instability, leading to a significant modification of the international financial system in place since the end of World War II.

During the Nixon Administration, international scientific, technological, and environmental issues grew in prominence. In October 1973, Congress passed legislation creating the Bureau of Oceans and International Environments and Scientific Affairs (OES), to handle environmental issues, weather, oceans, Antarctic affairs, atmosphere, fisheries, wildlife conservation, health, and population matters. The Department had difficulty filling the new Assistant Secretary position until January 1975, when the former Atomic Energy Commissioner, Dixie Lee Ray , took the job. However, she resigned six months later claiming that OES was not playing a significant policy role.

Although Secretary Rogers still had broad responsibility for foreign policy, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and international organizations, the Department of State resented its exclusion from key policy decisions, and the Secretary continually fought to make his views known.

Monthly News & Updates from the Elliott School of International Affairs

50 years later: Richard Nixon’s Historic Visit to China

Two Elliott School faculty members who are leading international experts on U.S./China relations offer commentary on the 1972 foreign affairs breakthrough.

President Richard Nixon made one of the most significant foreign visits in the history of the United States 50 years ago when he traveled to the People’s Republic of China Feb. 21-28, 1972—ending two-plus decades of no communication or diplomatic ties between the two nations. 

GW Today sat down with two leading international experts on U.S./China from the Elliott School of International Affairs to discuss the trip to Beijing 50 years later.

David Shambaugh , the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science and International Affairs and director of the China Policy Program, served the State Department and National Security Council during President Jimmy Carter’s administration. He also served on the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S./China Relations and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Asia-Pacific Council and other public policy and scholarly organizations. Before GW, he was senior lecturer, lecturer and reader in Chinese politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where he also served as editor of The China Quarterly.

Robert Sutter , Professor of Practice of International Affairs, had a government career that lasted from 1968 until 2001. He served as senior specialist and director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service, the national intelligence officer for East Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Government’s National Intelligence Council, the China division director at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Shambaugh and Sutter were asked questions, some the same and some different, separately for this article.

Q: At the time, what was the significance of Nixon’s visit to China? 

Shambaugh : President Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972 was described at the time as “the week that changed the world.” While perhaps hyperbole, there is indeed truth in this characterization—for three principal reasons. First, it ended the 22-year estrangement and total lack of contact between both the governments and the people of China and the United States. It would take another seven years before official diplomatic relations would be consummated under the Carter administration—where I worked on the China staff of the National Security Council staff at the time—which in turn opened a wide variety of direct ties between our two societies, but the Nixon visit catalyzed the process. Second, with the American opening to China, other governments around the world, which had been part of the previous U.S. policy to isolate and contain China, now were free to open their own relations with the People’s Republic of China—thus, in a real sense, the Nixon visit not only opened U.S./China relations, but it also did much to open China’s own doors to the world that had been previously almost completely isolated. Third, the Nixon visit was a strategic stroke of genius and fundamentally altered the balance of power in the so-called strategic triangle (U.S., China, Soviet Union) at the time, aligning America and China against Moscow. That, in turn, led over time to the weakening of the Soviet Union, its collapse and end of the Cold War.

Q: How was the event viewed in the U.S. at the time? What about in China? 

Sutter: It was a big news item, and it was widely applauded. Everyone thought this was a great idea. The Chinese were on their best behavior. It was all very cordial. And it was in the interest of both sides to look like they were very close. China was desperate. And China was under the gun from the Soviet Union. It was very much in the Chinese interest because they were very worried about the U.S. and Soviet Union.  

Q: Did Nixon’s China policy and visit facilitate the creation of modern China? 

Shambaugh: Indirectly, yes. Nixon’s visit facilitated China’s broader opening the world, notably the Western world. This brought China in direct contact with the world’s most developed economies—which have been central to the foreign investment, technology transfer, and professional exchanges that have all contributed much to China’s dynamic economic growth since. But it also took the death of [Chinse President] Mao [Zedong] and the coming to power of Deng Xiaoping in 1978 to relax the repression and xenophobia within China, so the country could take advantage of the door that Nixon and Mao initially opened.

Q: What would be comparable to Nixon’s visit today?

Sutter: I just want to reiterate the fragility of China (in 1972). This was a dangerous mission. They were taking a risk. But they must have had enough evidence that they felt the president could be secured, and they could get him out if they had to. It was like going to North Korea today. China then was a lot like North Korea today. Very secretive. There’s so many things you didn’t know. It was a gamble, in a way.

Q: Why does the Nixon visit still fascinate so many? And why is it important for students today to learn about it? 

Shambaugh: The Nixon visit continues to fascinate, in part, because it was such great public theater—because it took place on live television . Here was a society (Communist China) that had been completely closed off from the world since 1949, having recently been convulsed by the cultural revolution (from 1966-76), literally opening itself up for others to peer inside. The drama of Nixon meeting Mao [Zedong], being feted in the Great Hall of the People, touring the Great Wall and signing the Shanghai Communique was all riveting theater. As for students today, I am currently teaching my graduate-level U.S./China relations course this semester, and we watched the film ”History Declassified: Nixon in China” earlier this month, and I also invited to class Winston Lord—who was Nixon’s and [former Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger’s close aide. He participated in Kissinger’s secret 1971 trip to Beijing, the Nixon visit itself, played a key role in negotiating the Shanghai Communiqué, and later became America’s ambassador to China from 1985 until 1989. The students loved it. So, yes, the Nixon visit is still very much alive, at least in my class in the Elliott School. As for what students can still learn from it, I would say that no matter how great a gulf or differences can be between governments or peoples, there is always the possibility of improving ties. This is something we should remember about U.S./China relations when they are as strained as they are today.

Q: Nixon self-described the visit as a “week that changed the world.” Looking back 50 years later and where the two countries are now, is that statement accurate, far off, or somewhere in the middle?

Sutter: It fundamentally changed the world at the time, but the world has also changed since, and China changed. Maybe the United States has changed too, but China has definitely changed. It’s just more powerful. We never knew, we outsiders never knew what China would do if it became very powerful. There was no evidence to back that up. But now we have evidence of it. That changes our perceptions and, and that’s what’s happened over the last few years.

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Pop quiz: Where do presidents vacation and hold historic events? Answer: Camp David.

American presidents have a history of enjoying the seclusion of camp david..

Summertime for many Americans means escaping to sleep under starry skies at a favorite lake or summer camp.

For chief executives since Franklin Roosevelt, getting away begins with  Camp David , the presidential retreat more than 60 miles north of the White House , a rustic refuge that has become a hideaway to recharge, a sanctuary to deliberate big decisions and a woodsy setting for global diplomacy. 

“The president comes from a different world,” said Mike O’Connor, the camp’s commanding officer from 2001-03. “At Camp David, he can set some of that aside.” 

The 125-acre compound was built in 1938 in western Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain Park as a campsite for federal employees and their families. After looking at several alternatives, Roosevelt came to the site, draped in the shade of oak, ash and hickory trees, and announced, “This is my Shangri-la.” Even after it was built up into a presidential retreat, it was rustic: The walls of the dozen cabins were left unpainted, a wagon wheel chandelier hung in the main dining room and the furniture was scavenged from military warehouses. 

Camp David goes from possible closure to getting upgrades

Roosevelt liked to sit on the porch of the presidential cabin, working on his stamp collection or enjoying a cocktail. (His Scottish terrier, Fala,  had a doghouse next door.) But World War II was always as close as the telephone linked to the White House switchboard.

FDR began the tradition of inviting foreign leaders to join him, like British Prime Minister  Winston Churchill,  whose spring 1943 visit included war planning discussions.

As much as Roosevelt loved his getaway, its future wasn’t assured. Harry Truman preferred to unwind in Key West , Florida. Dwight Eisenhower was ready to shut the site down as a cost-saving measure.

But when Eisenhower’s attorney general sent him a “ Petition for Executive Clemency ” to spare the camp, the president relented, adding a helicopter landing pad − he was the first to use a helicopter as president − that shortened the trip from the White House to just half an hour. He installed a small golf course, grilled on a new patio and practiced his oil painting under the trees.

Eisenhower even renamed it “Camp David,” in honor of his 5-year-old grandson . 

Planning a summer wedding? When your wedding is at the White House, no detail is too small – even in the 1800s

While it’s not posh, Camp David has become one of the world’s most exclusive resorts. A main cabin called Laurel Lodge offers conference rooms, a dining room and a small presidential office. Other buildings host a library, game room, a gym and a movie theater.

A fleet of golf carts shuttle guests and staff (with the president’s vehicle dubbed Golf Cart One). An octagonal wood and stained glass chapel seats up to 150, with a Navy chaplain presiding. White-tailed deer roam the grounds, sometimes munching on flower beds.

Where presidents had conversations that changed history

Even when they bring along briefing books, intelligence reports and pending decisions, the novelty of slowing down amid the hilltop trees can be transformative for overworked White House visitors.

“ The Camp David air smells different ,” said President Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire. “There you are on top of the mountain, closer to God or whatever it is that moves people about mountaintops.” 

The camp’s isolation also makes it ideal for the deeper thinking that big policy decisions demand.

After the Bay of Pigs disaster in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy brought former President Eisenhower to Camp David to seek his counsel.

President Lyndon Johnson gathered his top advisers in 1965 at Camp David to debate the historic decision to escalate American involvement in the war in Vietnam – and brought many of them back three years later to plan peace talks . 

Nixon flew his top economic advisers and Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns there in August 1971 to map out his decision to unlink the U.S. dollar from the price of gold , remaking the global monetary system. “I find that up here on top of a mountain, it is easier for me to get on top of the job,” Nixon told reporters. During the Watergate scandal, it was at Camp David that President Nixon asked for the resignations of his top aides , John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman. 

Camp David as the presidential getaway

For many presidents, Camp David has been a perfect getaway for personal diplomacy with foreign leaders: “It cements a different friendship than simply having a fancy event amid gleaming silver and glittering chandeliers,” wrote first lady Laura Bush .

After Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the camp in 1959 , when he watched Westerns with President Eisenhower and toured the nearby Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, he returned home and talked about the “spirit of Camp David.” (Nearly 15 years later, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev raced a new Lincoln Continental , a gift from President Nixon, around the camp’s narrow, curvy roads.)

When President Barack Obama hosted the annual Group of Eight summit of foreign leaders at Camp David in 2012, wrote former camp commander Michael Giorgione in his memoir " Inside Camp David ," the overflowing delegations taxed water pressure in the cabins and sparked a golf cart shortage. But after their second day of meetings, the leaders huddled behind a conference table to watch an international soccer championship.

When it’s time to unwind, Camp David offers many ways to escape. Johnson took up bowling. Nixon installed a heated swimming pool. Ronald Reagan rode horseback – and when movies he had starred in were screened on Friday nights at the camp theater, he shared behind-the-scenes stories. George H.W. Bush had a horseshoe pit installed there (Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s first-ever throw was a ringer ). George W. Bush took morning mountain biking rides with guests and aides.

President Obama enjoyed celebrating his birthday at Camp David, competing with friends in a two-day “campathlon” that featured a home run derby, a football toss, skeet shooting, bowling, pool, darts and three-on-three basketball on a court with a large presidential seal in the middle.  

Camp David has also provided lifetime memories for first families. President George H.W. Bush’s daughter Dorothy had her wedding at the chapel, and President Johnson’s daughter Lynda Bird and Chuck Robb honeymooned there. The Clintons liked to spend Thanksgiving at Camp David, and Presidents Clinton and Obama gave their daughters driving lessons on the grounds.

As for presidential dogs cooped up amid White House finery, getting away offers a one-of-a-kind chance to run and roam. “Camp David,” Lady Bird Johnson once said, “is more a psychological journey than a physical one .” 

Jimmy Carter helped negotiate peace at Camp David

Camp David’s most celebrated moment came in 1978, when President Jimmy Carter hosted 13 long days of negotiations between Egypt and Israel, which had fought four major wars in the previous three decades . "We were looking for a place to get the leaders (and their senior advisers) away from really everything,” explained Carter’s press secretary, Jody Powell. 

The negotiations were tense and prone to breaking down, and Carter shuttled between the leaders’ cabins between joint meetings. “The close proximity of the living quarters,” he later wrote, “engenders an atmosphere of both isolation and intimacy,  conducive to easing tension and encouraging informality .” At one point the president had to block both leaders from leaving the room to keep the talks going. 

What is a state dinner? White House state dinners put America on display. They're crucial for US diplomacy.

The Camp David staff stretched to support the needs of 100 staff brought by the leaders. Kosher food was prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his team in a separate kitchen and transported to the dining hall by golf cart.  

Camp David’s setting and atmosphere were critical to the ultimate success of the talks, providing respites for negotiators to recharge from intense sessions. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat took long trail walks and played chess with national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

When Carter took Sadat and Begin to visit Gettysburg, he sat between them on the drive up, warning them not to discuss negotiations during what he wanted to be a respite from their tensions. The camp’s movie house ran 24/7, showing 58 movies that included "Doctor Zhivago" and "The Return of the Pink Panther."

No one ever predicted that a mountaintop compound would become a critical tool for the modern presidency, offering a unique place to make history or just recharge from the pressures of world leadership. “If I get to return to this world, I’d like to come back to Camp David,” first lady Betty Ford wrote in her diary. “The air, the trees, the sky – it’s paradise.” 

As former White House staffer Ken Khachigian put it, “It’s where a president can be a human being again .”

Stewart D. McLaurin is president of the  White House Historical Association , a private nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961.  

News | Colleen Shogan, first woman appointed U.S….

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News | Colleen Shogan, first woman appointed U.S. archivist, visits Nixon Library

Since assuming office in may 2023, shogan is making it a point to visit every national archive in her domain to meet local staff and identify ways to increase public accessibility to records, she said..

Her oversight includes 42 archival facilities across the country including 15 of America’s presidential libraries, which bring together the documents and artifacts to tell the history of each presidential administration since Herbert Hoover.

Tamara K. Martin, director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum gives Colleen Shogan, archivist of the United States, a tour of the grounds at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Colleen Shogan, archivist of the United States, views the graves of Richard and Pat Nixon on a visit to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Tamara K. Martin, director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

On Wednesday, Shogan made her inaugural visit to the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda, home of hundreds of thousands of documents from Richard Nixon’s presidency and lifetime. She spent the bulk of her day discussing how her agency can work with local staff and the Nixon Foundation to increase access to historical records.

Since assuming office in May 2023, Shogan, a former graduate fellow in American politics at Yale University, instructor at Georgetown University and senior executive at the Library of Congress, has been making it a point to visit every national archive in her domain to identify ways to enhance the public accessibility of records, she said.

“My vision for the archives is to improve access to our nation’s records,” she said. “Whether they’re federal records from agencies all across the country and presidential records at all our presidential libraries, we’re trying to figure out ways that more Americans can interact with the records in a useful and productive way.”

That mission strikes a resonant chord at the Nixon Library, where staff are tasked with telling a story of a presidency simultaneously defeated by secrecy yet responsible for producing one of the largest troves of public documents, photographs and tapes in presidential history. For years, Nixon c overtly recorded nearly every conversation he had in the Oval Office , as well as other areas of the White House and Camp David, creating a never-before-matched and highly controversial bounty of presidential records.

After visiting the Nixon exhibits for the first time, Shogan said she was left with a message about the ups and downs in life and leadership .

“The main theme of the exhibits I would say is that you can’t know your success in life if you haven’t had failures, and, for sure, that’s a great message for young people to be able to learn about and to learn from Richard Nixon,” she said.

More than 50 years on, many of Nixon’s presidential endeavors are relevant today. Navigating foreign policy with China, negotiating a war in Israel, nominating four justices to the Supreme Court, contending with domestic challenges around environmental and racial injustices, addressing gender inequality and managing a drug crisis. Any one of these issues could affect the 2024 presidential election as much as they shaped the Nixon White House.

Tamara Martin, the director of the Nixon Library, said researchers still flock to the archives to study all kinds of aspects of the Nixon administration, including his legacy far beyond Watergate. For example, his administration created the Environmental Protection Agency, oversaw the Apollo space missions and strove to put more women in government positions across agencies, Martin said.

“The Nixon story is a big story and there’s a lot of information in the records that we want to share with the public,” she said.

But a half-century later, some Nixon-era documents remain classified.

Shogan works with other agencies to declassify as much information as possible to make it available to researchers and the public. Some of what remains classified, she said, has to do with human intelligence — espionage. If released, the information could threaten the living connections of spies and potentially harm diplomatic relationships with other countries, she said.

But the biggest hurdle toward declassification is a resource problem, Shogan added.

“In the United States, the amount of money we put into classifying all kinds of information versus the amount of funding we have set aside to declassify information, I mean, it’s not even comparable,” she said. “There’s hundreds and hundreds of times more resources going to classifying information than declassifying it.”

Bureaucracy is another challenge.

“So, if we have a record from Nixon’s presidency and it’s been classified, let’s say, by the Defense Intelligence Agency and also the CIA, we can’t at the National Archives just look at that information and say it’s over 50 years old, certainly we should be able to release that. We don’t have the authority to be able to do that,” she explained. “We have to work with those other classifying agencies, in this example the DIA and CIA, and they both have to agree to declassify.”

Streamlining that interagency process as much as possible is something Shogan helps Martin and other local archivists with.

Another of her goals is to digitize the national archives to improve their accessibility.

Walk into the Nixon Library and the first of the former president’s quotes any visitor sees is written in bright silver letters on the entrance wall: “Libraries can be passive, dry repositories of books and documents. I hope that the Nixon Library and birthplace will be different — a vital place of discovery and rediscovery, of investigation and contemplation, of study, debate and analysis.”

In many ways, this Nixon quote speaks to Shogan’s task to shepherd a pen-and-paper archive into a digital age.

“The notion of an archive or a library is changing,” she said. “It’s not going to be the same as it was 10 years ago. The National Archive as a whole agency is still a predominantly paper or analog archive, but I would say in 20 years it’s going to be a predominantly digital archive.”

“It doesn’t mean you don’t need to have a library or an archive,” she said. “Because of the proliferation of information in the digital age, it actually means that you need to have it more because you’re going to need archivists to help users sort through all that information to find records that are responsive to what they’re searching for.”

For now, she’s moving full steam ahead on America 250, a retrospective of the country’s 250th anniversary in 2026. At each presidential library, the program will feature letters written from ordinary citizens to presidents. Many such letters written to Nixon for or against his policy in Vietnam are currently on display in Yorba Linda.

“A national display of letters lets people look back and put history in context,” she said. “We have a tendency to be very presentist. That’s just how we are as human beings. So, we think there’s never been anything like what we’re going through right now. But if you go back and read those letters, you see, actually, Americans were very concerned all throughout our history.”

“With the emotion that they have writing to their president, either being very happy with what the president has done or very displeased with the actions the president has taken,” She said, “we’re going to bring that to life. And, I think people are really going to like that resource.”

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Jimmy Carter’s post-presidency has been remarkable — with one exception

In fewer than 100 days, Jimmy Carter will turn 100 , making him the first former president to become a centenarian.

When his office announced more than 16 months ago that Carter had entered hospice care at his home in Plains, Ga., it was widely assumed that the 39th president had only days or weeks to live. In the United States, 25 percent of patients die within five days of enrolling in hospice; half pass away within 17 days .

But Carter is a tough survivor. At age 90, he was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and the brain , but he went on to beat them both . He broke his hip and pelvis in falls five years ago but successfully recovered. Carter’s longevity and physical resilience are just two of the factors that make his extended post-presidency — he left the White House after one term more than 43 years ago — so remarkable.

Over the years I have written a number of times to praise choices Carter has made since he was defeated for reelection in 1980. I admire his devotion to Habitat for Humanity and the hundreds of hours he and his late wife, Rosalynn, spent helping to construct homes for people in need. I applaud his efforts, through the Carter Center he established in 1982, to eradicate a devastating disease called Guinea worm . Above all I have applauded his refusal to spend his post-White House years — unlike every other president in the modern era — lining his pockets with millions of dollars accumulated through speaking fees.

Unfortunately, not everything about Carter’s long tenure as a former president has been so commendable. Especially unpleasant and damaging was the frequency with which he derided his successors and their policies.

Virtually from the moment Joe Biden became president, he has been attacked, critiqued, and mocked by his predecessor, Donald Trump. Such behavior is typical of Trump. But for most of the modern era it has been decidedly atypical of ex-presidents. After leaving the White House, Lyndon Johnson didn’t trash Richard Nixon; Gerald Ford didn’t publicly undercut Carter; and George W. Bush was scrupulous about not criticizing Barack Obama .

The one exception to the rule was Carter, who lashed out repeatedly at the men who succeeded him in the nation’s highest office.

Jared Cohen devotes a chapter to Carter in “ Life After Power ,” a fascinating new history of seven former presidents and what they did with their lives after their White House tenures came to an end. A key theme of Carter’s post-presidency was the resentment he felt over losing his bid for a second term. His greatest failing in office, he said in an interview, was “allowing Ronald Reagan to become president.”

Carter made no attempt to disguise those feelings.

When the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Reagan asked Carter to represent the United States at the funeral in Cairo and afterward invited Carter to a private meeting at the White House. But on his way to the Oval Office, the former president excoriated his successor , calling him “an aberration on the political scene” and deriding his “false and erroneous promises.”

Carter “seldom passed up an opportunity to lambaste Ronald Reagan,” Cohen writes. But the lambasting didn’t end when Reagan’s presidency ended. Carter openly undermined the elder Bush’s efforts to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, going so far as to lobby the UN Security Council to oppose military intervention. When Bill Clinton sought to pressure North Korea to end its illegal nuclear weapons program, Carter went on CNN to undercut the White House position. After 9/11, Carter went out of his way to rebuke the second President Bush, calling his foreign policy “the worst in history.” He later said his harsh words had been “ careless ” — but he also wrote a column in The New York Times taking pride in what he called his “ pariah diplomacy ” to resist the administration’s efforts abroad.

Later still came an attack on the Obama administration’s “cruel and unusual” use of drones to target terrorists abroad. “The United States,” Carter declared in 2012 , “is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.” The following year, angry over revelations of Obama’s domestic surveillance program , Carter told an interviewer that “America has no functioning democracy at this moment.” As for Trump, Carter told a TV audience that he was “an illegitimate president” who really lost the [2016] election but “was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

The most shining achievements of Carter’s post-White House career have been those that steered clear of partisan politics — his efforts to end sickness, house the poor, and monitor foreign elections. His inability to restrain the urge to berate his successors was far less admirable. The 39th president’s virtues were considerable . Alas, so were his flaws.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him on X @jeff_jacoby . To subscribe to Arguable, his weekly newsletter, visit globe.com/arguable .

Trump previews attacks on Biden's son ahead of debate

As Donald Trump and Joe Biden prepare to face off on the debate stage, Trump has previewed one line of attack against his Democratic opponent in a long-running feud over the former president’s attempts to tie Biden to his son’s foreign business dealings. 

Hunter Biden’s struggles have been elevated in recent weeks by his felony conviction in a gun trial — proceedings that led Republicans to take a victory lap when government witnesses confirmed the authenticity of his abandoned laptop computer, materials from which have stoked GOP claims that he spent years profiting off his proximity to his father. 

Now, Biden and Trump are poised to face off for the first time since 2020 in a debate hosted by CNN at its Atlanta studio, with Trump suggesting he will reprise the attack line. 

“It wasn’t Russian disinformation. It was a made-up story for election interference purposes,” Trump said at a recent conservative conference. “I assume we’re going to be talking about that at the debate.”

There will be no in-person audience for the 90-minute debate, a dynamic that threatens to upend expectations.

“It’s telling you what is going on, indirectly, with applause or not applause,” Trump said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. He acknowledged he interrupted Biden too often during the first debate against him in September 2020 and said he had learned from the experience. 

Follow live updates on the Trump-Biden presidential debate

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said there is a ready-made opportunity for the moderators to showcase a level playing field for Trump on Thursday.

“If CNN wants to prove they’re fair and balanced, they should ask Joe Biden why he lied about the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop on the debate stage four years ago in 2020,” Leavitt told NBC News. 

In the October 2020 general election debate, after Trump mentioned the laptop, Biden responded that it was a "Russian plan."

Biden is preparing to face several possible Trumps on Thursday, including a grievance-filled Trump and a version who hews to a more disciplined message, with Biden’s advisers combing through recent interviews to identify his trigger points.

Trump has shied away from attacking Hunter Biden over his addiction struggles, an attitude that some say lends itself to holding out an olive branch to the former president’s son. A Trump ally suggested he would be wise to offer a commutation of Hunter Biden’s sentence if he wins.

There is evidence to suggest that Trump holds a softer outlook toward Hunter Biden than he does his father, whom Trump’s allies expect he'll go after following Trump’s conviction on charges related to a hush money payment.

“Trump doesn’t see Hunter Biden’s struggles with addiction as a target,” a former senior Trump administration official said. “The animosity is towards Joe Biden, and there’s the notion that Hunter wouldn’t be in that position if it wasn’t for his father.”

At Camp David, Maryland, Biden has been preparing for how the debate could unfold. That includes the idea that Trump might raise the subject of Hunter Biden and his legal issues. Meanwhile, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a top vice presidential running mate prospect, has challenged CNN to raise questions about the laptop, Trump's political action committee has floated potential lines of inquiry for the moderators, and Trump's own Truth Social posts seem to heighten the possibility that he'll mention the topic, a source familiar with debate preparations and discussions said.

But Biden's advisers don't think it will definitively come up in the debate or be a significant focus if it does, and aides have tracked public comments by Trump suggesting he might soften his tone.

There’s a chance Trump may sidestep the issue altogether. As Hunter Biden’s recent trial on gun charges placed his spiral into drugs under a microscope, Trump has shied away from attacking him over his addiction. Instead, he spoke at length about his own brother’s struggle with alcoholism in an interview with Sean Hannity while Biden’s trial was underway.

“You have sympathy for addiction — I think most Americans do,” Hannity said before he tried to direct the interview to what he called the “bigger issues involving the Biden family.” 

Trump interjected. “Excuse me,” he said. “Look, I feel very badly for them in terms of the addiction part of what they have right now, because I understand the addiction world. ... Frankly, it would be nice if people would do certain things and live certain ways, but you’re not able to. They’re just not able to break it.” 

Some Republican allies believe talking about Hunter Biden’s conviction is bad politics for Trump because it risks placing a spotlight on his own legal issues. After a historic nearly two-month trial, he was convicted in New York City last month of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 campaign. His support among swing and independent voters appeared to falter in a recent poll by Fox News, in which Joe Biden took a slight lead over Trump in a general election match-up. That lead is within the margin of error.

“It gets us off message,” said a Republican consultant with ties to Trump. “Who knows what happens if Biden says something that ticks him off? But the more we can talk about issues, the better off we’re going to be.”

The consultant said it risks setting off a tit-for-tat that is unlikely to do Trump any favors.

“He’ll say you’re a convicted felon, and it’s going to turn off the independents; it’s going to turn off those swing voters,” the consultant said. 

Biden's aides feel that he had a "very strong" moment when, in 2020, Trump swiped at Hunter Biden on the debate stage, an exchange they would be glad to see repeated, a source familiar with the preparations and discussions said, noting that the president is happy to reiterate his support for his son in his recovery from addiction.

The source said Biden is prepared to restate what he has already said publicly: that he has no plans to pardon his son or commute his sentence.

Trump, meanwhile, has been advised to focus on the issues and is being prepped on policy. 

“The more Donald Trump can talk about issues, can talk about his accomplishments and can talk about his vision for the country, the better off we’re going to be,” this person said. 

A source familiar with some of the strategies being discussed echoed that sentiment, saying, “Trump will focus on the issues that people know and love him for.”

The danger, this person said, is “you bring up Hunter, [Biden] brings up the New York court verdict,” meaning Trump’s recent conviction on charges related to the hush money payment stemming from the 2016 campaign. 

Republican leaders in the House this month sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department recommending charges against Hunter and James Biden, the president’s brother, claiming statements they made before the Oversight and Judiciary committees implicate Joe Biden in what Republicans say was an effort to profit off his family’s business dealings while he was vice president. Biden has denied wrongdoing, and GOP investigations have yet to deliver evidence implicating him. 

But hammering the issue won’t matter unless Biden faces criminal penalties.

“We proved this with Trump,” a former Trump adviser said. “The allegations didn’t hurt until he was convicted.”

During the first debate in 2020, Biden said Trump’s allegations that his son took payments from foreign business associates when Biden was vice president were “totally discredited.” When the two faced off in a second debate weeks later, Trump returned to the issue, seeking to tie Biden to materials allegedly pulled from a computer Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop during his spiral into drug addiction. 

“If this is true, then he’s a corrupt politician,” Trump said before he turned to Biden. “So don’t give me the stuff about how you’re this innocent baby.” 

In response, Biden cited a letter from 51 former intelligence officials who claimed the files on the laptop had “the classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation. It was an allegation poised to draw Trump’s ire after he faced a special counsel investigation over his campaign’s ties to Russia and was deemed a would-be “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin by Hillary Clinton four years earlier. 

The White House has denied that Biden had any involvement in his son’s business deals.

Furthermore, while Trump has continued to raise money off of his conviction in New York, a former adviser said the frequent reminders risk damaging his appeal to independent and swing voters.

“Right now, he’s Richard Nixon with two fingers up saying, 'I’m not a crook,'” the former adviser said. 

And there are other pitfalls. If Trump attacks Biden’s age, “he brings up that they are the same age,” the ally said.

Another source familiar with Trump’s planning said: “I told him to stay away. But no one tells Donald what to do.”

Katherine Doyle is a White House reporter for NBC News.

Monica Alba is a White House correspondent for NBC News.

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Opinion Jamelle Bouie

The Lazy Authoritarianism of Donald Trump

Credit... Erin Schaff/The New York Times

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By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

• June 21, 2024

Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill last week to visit with House Republicans. According to most reports of the meeting, he rambled.

People present told the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS that the former president “treated his meeting as an opportunity to deliver a behind-closed-doors, stream-of-consciousness rant” in which he “tried to settle scores in the House G.O.P., trashed the city of Milwaukee and took a shot at Nancy Pelosi’s ‘wacko’ daughter.” It was “like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion.”

That same week, Trump met with a group of chief executives at the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable . Attendees, CNBC reports , were disappointed. “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one executive. Others said that Trump was “remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought and was all over the map.”

There is a good chance that by the end of the year, Trump will be president-elect of the United States. And yet with less than five months left before the election, he is no more prepared for a second term than he was for a first. He may even be less prepared: less capable of organizing his thoughts, less able to speak with any coherence and less willing to do or learn anything that might help him overcome his deficiencies.

Everything that made Trump a bad president the first time around promises to make him an even worse one in a second term.

When I say “bad” here, I don’t mean the content of Trump’s agenda, as objectionable as it is, as much as I do his ability to handle the job of chief executive of the United States. In a political culture as obsessed with drama and celebrity as our own, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the presidency is an actual job — one of the most difficult in the world.

“Just a partial list of all that must go right in a presidency starts to stretch the limits of human endeavor,” John Dickerson, a reporter and anchor for CBS News, writes in “The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency.”

“A president,” he goes on to say, “needs to pick the right team in a hurry, including a chief of staff who gets the balance of information flow, delegation and gatekeeping just right. The cabinet needs to be filled with leaders who have autonomy but not so much ego that they create political disasters. A president must have exquisite fingertip feel for prioritization, communication and political nuance.”

Trump, in his first term, was not equipped to do the work required of him.

As Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist, notes in a post for his Substack newsletter , Trump “utterly failed” at the “most important thing for presidents to do in order to succeed: collecting information. Trump didn’t read. He didn’t pay attention during briefings. He didn’t care about policy. He didn’t even bother, as far as anyone can tell, to learn the basic rules of the constitutional system.”

It’s not as if we can expect things to be better in a second term. “Everyone makes mistakes and ideally learns from them,” Matthew Yglesias observes in a recent analysis of Trump’s record as president . “As best I can tell, what Trump learned from his term is that he needs to double down on surrounding himself with craven loyalists who won’t contradict him.”

There is an obvious rejoinder here: How is it possible that Trump is both incompetent and a dangerous authoritarian? How can he undermine American democracy when he struggles to manage his administration?

The answer is that this only seems like a contradiction. In truth, these two sides of the former president are easy to reconcile.

Trump’s authoritarian instincts — his refusal to accept or even learn the rules of the constitutional system — are a huge part of the reason he struggled in the job of president. They helped produce the chaos of his administration. That, in turn, has led him to want to corrode and strip away those rules and strictures that stand in the way of his desire to impose his will directly, both on the government and the country at large.

As Dickerson writes, “Trump is in rebellion against the presidency. Its traditions get in the way of the quick results he wants. He either sidesteps or flattens obstacles or opponents that irritate him or slow him down.”

By no means is Trump the first president or even the first Republican president to abuse the power of the office in an effort to overcome the constitutional limits of the office. We can see something similar with Richard Nixon and Watergate as well as Ronald Reagan and Iran-contra, when the White House circumvented a congressional prohibition on foreign aid to rebel groups in Nicaragua.

But Trump makes no distinction between himself and the office of the presidency. He is the kind of man who might say, “L’état, c’est moi” if he knew of anything other than his own desires. He has the heart of an absolutist.

For Trump to bend to the presidency, he would have to embark on the impossible task of denying himself the satisfaction of imposing his will on others. And so he has tried to break the presidency instead, to transform a constitutional office defined by its limits into an instrument of his personal authority.

A second term would mean even more of the chaos, corruption, disorder and incompetence that defined his first four years in office. Trump and his more ideologically driven allies and advisers would smash through the constitutional system in a reckless drive to satisfy their dreams, desires and delusions.

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Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @ jbouie

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